Banana pancakes arrived as promised, and everyone agreed that they were much nicer than yesterday’s offering. A pickup truck arrived to take us to the start of our jungle trek. Charlotte managed to get the passenger seat, while the rest of us travelled cargo class. The drive was refreshing, though the guide seemed more interested in showing Charlotte his photo albums than in looking at the road, steering wheel or anything else normally indespensible to the task of driving a truck.

When we got to our drop off point, which was a dirt track in the jungle, Charlotte explained that the guide’s photos were from his latest movie, in which he was a supporting actor. So our guide was also a film star. Naturally.

We made fairly good progress through the jungle, crossing the river several times on increasingly ingenious but progressively less safe bamboo bridges, doing a fair bit of wading too. After lunch, which was packed, our jungle guide led us to a nearby village, where the locals grew rubber trees and sold strange burmese sweets to farang trekkers such as ourselves. The village was built on the river bank, at a bend which was perfect for swimming.

We left to find our next stop – the location where we’d board bamboo rafts for a two hour trip downstream. When we got there the rafts weren’t quite ready for us – specifically, they hadn’t been built yet. Three men frantically scrambled with machetes and bamboo to complete the job, and ten minutes later I found myself on the maiden voyage of raft one, along with Lorna and a driver. Another raft followed carrying Sue and Steve, while Charlotte occupied a third.

The river was hardly benign. As we were punted slowly downstream, we encountered lots of rapids, which were very tame by whitewater standards, but on our little homemade rafts they were good fun.

The scenery was stunning, and the trip was a scerene and relaxing reward for the hard work of the morning. We passed kids playing, and people washing, and got happy waves from most.

The rafts pulled in to the bank next to a guy with a movie camera and a team of what looked like a film crew. Getting off I realised that we had docked on a film set. It looked exactly like a traditional village, but it was all purpose-built for the film. The guide was apparently picking us up from his place of work.